The Biden administration has ruled that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman should be granted immunity in a case brought against him by the fiancee of Washington Post reporter Jamal Khashoggi, who the administration said was murdered on his orders prince.
A court filing was made by Justice Department lawyers at the State Department’s request because bin Salman recently became Saudi Arabia’s prime minister and therefore qualifies for immunity as a foreign head of government, the request said. It was filed late Thursday night, shortly before a court deadline for the Justice Department to present its views to the court on the immunity issue and other arguments the prince made to dismiss the suit.
“Mohammed bin Salman, the Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is the acting head of government and is therefore immune from this lawsuit,” the filing says, calling the killing “heinous.”
The decision is likely to provoke an angry reaction. The White House had hoped that President Joe Biden’s July trip to Saudi Arabia would put the rocky US-Saudi relationship back on track, but since then, relations have only continued to deteriorate.
The relationship is being reassessed, the White House said, after Saudi-led OPEC+ oil production cuts that the administration saw as a direct affront to the US. Members of Congress, already outraged by the oil cut and calling for a reassessment, will likely only be further outraged if the prince is granted immunity.
Hatice Cengiz, Khashoggi’s fiancee, and the Washington-based human rights organization founded by the late journalist, DAWN, initially filed suit against Bin Salman and 28 others in October 2020 in Federal District Court in Washington. They claim the hit squad “kidnapped, bound, drugged, tortured and murdered” Khashoggi at the Saudi consulate in Istanbul and then dismembered his body. His remains were never found.
DAWN executive director Sarah Leah Whitson called the immunity request a “shocking result” and a “massive concession” to Saudi Arabia.
“It is truly beyond ironic that President Biden has essentially provided an assurance of impunity for Mohammed bin Salman, which is the exact opposite of what he promised to do to hold Jamal Khashoggi’s killers accountable,” Whitson told CNN.
A US intelligence community report on Khashoggi’s assassination released in February 2021 as Biden took office said that Bin Salman authorized the operation to capture or kill the journalist that ended with his murder and dismemberment.
Bin Salman denied the allegations and sought immunity from prosecution, claiming that his various government and royal positions gave him immunity and placed him outside the jurisdiction of US courts.
But as heir to the throne, bin Salman was not entitled to sovereign immunity that would normally only include a head of state, head of government or foreign minister, none of whom was bin Salman.
Then, just days before the Biden administration was supposed to weigh in last month on the immunity issue, Bin Salman was promoted to prime minister from his father, King Salman, who would normally have held that position.
That was a “trick” to ensure the head of state’s so-called immunity, DAWN’s Whitson said, after which the Justice Department asked for a delay.
Now that bin Salman is prime minister, “the government should recommend that he is entitled to immunity,” said law professor William Dodge at the University of California, Davis School of Law, who previously wrote that the prince was not entitled to immunity.
“It’s almost automatic,” Dodge said, “I think that’s why he was appointed prime minister to get away from it.”
The State Department was not required to make an immunity determination, but was ordered to do so by the court. A spokesman said their request to grant immunity to bin Salman is based on longstanding common and international law, rather than reflecting current diplomatic relations or efforts.
“This offer of immunity does not reflect an assessment of the merits of the case. It doesn’t speak to anything about the broader policy or the state of the relationship,” a department spokesperson told CNN. “That was purely a legal determination.”
The Saudi embassy in Washington, D.C., did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bin Salman had also claimed immunity in a case against him by former Saudi counter-terrorism official Saad Aljabri, who accused the prince of sending a hit squad to kill him in Canada days after Khashoggi’s murder. That case was dismissed on other grounds by the same court.
“After reneging on its promise to punish MBS for Khashoggi’s murder, the Biden administration not only shielded MBS from accountability in US courts, but effectively gave him a license to kill more critics and declared he would never be held accountable.” Aljabri’s son, Khalid. , he told CNN on Thursday.
The White House was widely criticized for Biden’s trip to Saudi Arabia in July, when the president awkwardly slammed the crown prince, who he said he still held responsible for Khashoggi’s murder.
Biden said he touched on the assassination at the start of their meeting and that the prince continued to deny responsibility.
“I was straightforward and direct in his discussion. I made my point crystal clear,” Biden said.
A four-page report by the US intelligence community published in 2021 said the group of 15 people who arrived in Istanbul in October 2018 when Khashoggi was killed included members linked to the Saudi Center for Media Studies and Affairs (CSMARC) in the Basilica Courtyard. led by a close adviser to bin Salman, as well as “seven members of Mohammed bin Salman’s elite personal protection detail known as the Rapid Intervention Force.”
The report noted that Bin Salman viewed Khashoggi as a threat to the Kingdom “and widely supported the use of violent measures, if necessary, to silence him.”
The intelligence report said they had no visibility into when the Saudis decided to harm the father of five. “Although Saudi officials had pre-planned an unspecified operation against Khashoggi, we do not know how far in advance Saudi officials decided to harm him,” it said.
Last month, on the fourth anniversary of Khashoggi’s death, DAWN called on the Biden administration to declassify and release the full intelligence report on his assassination.
Khashoggi’s fiancee Genghis claims that when Khashoggi tried to get the papers he needed to get married at the embassy in Washington, officials “constructed an opportunity to assassinate him.”
He was told the only place he could get the documents he needed was at the consulate in Istanbul, he said. Two weeks before his appointment on Oct. 2, 2018, the day he was assassinated, Khashoggi and Genghis were married in a religious Islamic ceremony, the lawsuit says.
“The administration’s decision to encourage the courts to uphold MBS’s sovereign immunity is another disappointing chapter in a series of failures to hold Saudi Arabia’s leadership accountable for the brutal killing of Jamal Khashoggi,” said a senior Democratic congressional adviser. “Actions like this run counter to the administration’s hollow assurances of accountability and contradict our own intelligence assessments of MBS’s involvement.”
